[AccessD] A strange situation

J.C.,

    The person tasked with setting up the permissions could find it rather tedious to hop amongst large number of user groups in response to a given property of the form in question. It might be more convenient to handle one user group at a time, clicking  various permission settings relevant to it - for the given form.

    One could consider an arrangement wherein, for a given form, a matrix of virtual records (numbering the potential number of user groups) is presented for editing. Each such record represents a user group and the settable properties (e.g AllowAdditions, AllowEdits etc) appear across the columns as Yes / No check boxes.

    As and when any of the properties is set by clicking the check box in pertinent column, the erstwhile virtual record gets converted into an actual record in the source table. This way, the table is not burdened with redundant records (e.g. groups for which no permission has yet been set). At the same time, full matrix (of virtual plus actual records, covering all potential groups) is always available for convenient setting or editing of permissions for the given form. 

    An added advantage of such an arrangement is that data gets stored in a direct  manner without needing retention of calculated values, thus facilitating fast retrieval.

    During the process of setting permissions, user group column of each record can be conditionally highlighted, depending upon the number of permissions granted as against overall total.

    The approach outlined above is demonstrated in my sample db named Form_SetPermissionLevels. It is in access 2000 file format and is now available at Rogers Access Library. Link - 
http://www.rogersaccesslibrary.com/forum/forum_topics.asp?FID=45

    The above sample also includes a demonstration of using the permissions set as above. On selecting an employee from the combo box, followed by entering of correct password and clicking the log-in button, the user can select the form to be loaded - via the adjacent combo box. The selected form, with prescribed permissions duly enforced, gets loaded as a subform. For ready appreciation, the permission status gets displayed at top. Text boxes representing various permissions get highlighted in appropriate color, depending upon YES / NO state.

Best wishes,
A.D. Tejpal
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  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: jwcolby 
  To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving 
  Sent: Saturday, May 01, 2010 02:23
  Subject: Re: [AccessD] A strange situation


  Well...

  I like it except for two issues.

  1) Users occasionally get confused between what is selected - dark or light.  Or is that just me?  ')

  2) If there are a lot of groups it would either require a long list control or a scroll.  There are potentially up to 32 groups, though in practice we only have a handful at the moment.

  I am going to be setting up "table driven" security where a table has records for each form with the visible, allowedits etc properties.  The "security officer" can manipulate these records via the form we are discussing.

  Additionally The user will be able to manipulate visible and enabled properties for controls on the form as they are manipulating the form properties.  A list is MUCH simpler, that is for sure.

  The list would contain the names of the security groups.  The "selected" groups would be able to manipulate the property.  The programming would be much simpler for sure.

  I am going to give this a run and see what it looks like.

  John W. Colby
  www.ColbyConsulting.com


  William Hindman wrote:
  > ...more than that, why use 32 checkboxes at all? ...just strikes me as a 
  > clumsy user interface ...why not a multi-select listbox or combo that you 
  > can hide/unhide at will on the main form itself ...give it a Like* search 
  > box header to avoid long scrolls if needed.
  > 
  > William